Exam week sucks for teachers too

This is the point of the semester where I salute all my college professors that had to read final papers a foot or more high.  Thank you, dear professors, for reading all of those pages and still managing to like me enough to let me pass your course.  I take back any frustrated thoughts and expletives that came through my mouth as a result of waiting for final grades. 

I have eight classes of about 52-56 students, one class of 30, and one class of 25.  This leaves me with a lot of finals to grade before I leave on vacation.  Here's what I had them do:

Part One: Listening Comprehension

I asked them ten questions that they then had to write the answers to.  Spelling didn't count and I basically wanted to make sure they understand what the hell I've been saying the past few months.  I asked questions like:

- What is the weather like during the winter in Qingdao?
- Do you like spicy food? (the most commonly misunderstood -- many thought I said 'seafood')
- What are you planning to do for Spring Festival Vacation?

Part Two: Oral Dialogue

I had my students pull topics out of a box which they then had to create an oral dialogue with their language partner(s).  These dialogues had to be at least 5 lines per person, greetings and simple answers excluded and they were not allowed to read from notes.  Topics include:

- A is meeting B for the first time and they will be roommates in college
- Something really bad happened to person A
- What are you planning to do after graduation?

The first part took half the class last week and then I helped them prepare their dialogues.  This week I've been listening to oral dialogues in the freezing hallway.  It's taking a surprisingly long time to grade all of these. 

Now I am going back to merge their individual grades with their group grades and weighing attendance and the final exam.  It really sucks.  I also was overly generous with the first few classes I graded so I then have had to go back and deflate those grades. 

I've failed two kids already.  I've processed seven out of ten classes and I have to have this in before I leave on vacation on Sunday.  My bosses originally wanted it in this evening but we all told them ther was no !@%^@ way that we could have it all done yet, especially considering we were still doing exams this morning and afternoon.  So yeah, that is my life right now.  This is going to be a fun weekend. 

This is what happened when I left my students in the classroom when I was doing oral dialogues in the hallway.  I wrote "Chill out, guys!" because they were getting really antsy and rowdy!